What If?

There are three kinds of baseball teams.

There are teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies that, barring catastrophe, are likely to win 90+ games.

There are teams like the Pirates, Mariners, and Diamondbacks that, barring a miracle, are likely to lose 90+ games.

Then there are the What If Teams. The What If teams are those that, if everything breaks right, something magical could happen. The San Francisco Giants were a What If team last year. They were 22-1 odds to win the World Series. Yeah, they had some young live arms, but their best hitter was Aubrey Huff – Aubrey Huff! They finished ten games behind the Dodgers and Rockies in 2009, a lot of ground to make up. The Giants needed a lot of things to break right for a magical season.

And they all did. The young pitchers delivered. They scored just enough runs, mostly at the right time. Minor league prospect Buster Posey came up in late May and hit 18 homers. The Dodgers and Rockies, both of whom won 90+ games in 2009, dropped to the low 80’s. And the Padres, oh the Padres, who were the Ultimate What If team all year, fell apart in September.

I bring this all up because the New York Mets are one of those What If teams.

If Everything Breaks Right

I won’t go into detail here (I did in this post), but look at the Mets’ Ifs.

- If the starting pitching does what it did last year (7th in team ERA; 19 shutouts);

- If K-Rod continues to punch out batters the way he did last year (before punching out his kids’ grandpop);

- If Wright, Reyes, and Bay play like the great offensive players they’ve been most of their careers;

- If young players like Ike Davis, Mike Pelfrey, and Jonathan Niese continue their growth;

- If you get some great performances from unexpected places (my vote is on Chris Young, who I took in the 23rd round of my fantasy draft Sunday night);

- If a new manager - one that doesn’t look like, sound, and manage like a Jazz bassist backing a beat poet in 1968 Greenwich Village basement cafe- can inspire this team

- If all these things happen, well...

But you don’t just need good internal things…it helps if bad things happen to other people. And the Phillies could be ripe for the sort of catastrophe that derails a promising team.

Would I like to have their rotation? Sure. But remember, the Big 3 are over 30, and candles in a birthday cake hit pitchers faster than hitters. And here's some Did You Knows...

Did you know Cliff Lee, before his great October, was 4-6 with a 3.98 ERA as a Ranger?

Did you know that in 2009 Roy Oswalt’s ERA was 4.12

Did you know Cole Hamels’ record the past two seasons is 22-22?

And did you know Roy Halladay’s given name is Harry Leroy Halladay? (I have nothing bad to say about his pitching. Guy is awesome.)

And that’s the pitching vulnerability. It’s on offense where they can have real problems.

Ryan Howard, Team Stud, took a significant step backwards last year. Instead of 45 HRs/140 RBIs he went 31/108. And while he played fewer games, his OPS also dropped, from .931 to .859. He is nowhere near the monster player he was in 2006and his comps on baseball-reference.com aren’t encouraging*.

* If you like baseball stats, one of the coolest features on baseball-reference is the comps – where you can compare players to other players in history.The player most like Ryan Howard, at the same age, in all of baseball history, is Richie Sexson.

But Howard isn’t the problem. Chase Utley’s injury, Jayson Werth’s absence, and Jimmy Rollins’ overall suckiness – the guy’s career has been in a free fall since his undeserved MVP in 2007 – are the problems. That’s a lot of Ifs, but all are possible.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they all happened?

And wouldn’t it suck if they all happened…but the Braves had all their What Ifs happen and won the NL East?

The Iron Clipper

Which of the following Yankee Dynasties was the greatest ever?

+ The Ruth/Gehrig Yankees
+ The Joe DiMaggio Yankees
+ The Mantle/Berra Yankees
+ The Reggie/Billy Yankees
+ The Jeter/Mariano Yankees

(Yeah, it’s questionable including Reggie/Billy since 2 titles does not a Dynasty make. But I think that 2 consecutive titles qualifies, otherwise you couldn’t include the Big Red Machine. If you disagree, write your own damn blog.)

The answer is: None of the Above. At least according to David Schoenfield, who ranked all 27 Yankee champions on ESPN’s Page 2 this week.

Extrapolating a bit from the Page 2 list, the greatest Yankee dynasty was one that, quite frankly, I didn’t know existed: the Gehrig/DiMaggio Yankees, which won 4 consecutive World Series from 1936 to 1939.

(Yeah, it’s questionable including 1939, since Gehrig gave his famous “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech on April 30th after playing in only 8 games. But I’m going to count it since his spirit was on that team. If you disagree, write your own damn blog.)

Anyway, like most people I associate Gehrig with Ruth, and think of Joltin’ Joe as sort of being on his own. It surprised me to learn that the Iron Horse and the Yankee Clipper were teammates for nearly four seasons, from 1936 to 1939, and the Yankees won the World Series in every one of those years. And it further surprised me to see Page 2 rank those 4 teams as being 4 of the 8 greatest Yankee champs ever – mixed in with the ‘27 (#2), 98’ (#3), ’53 (#6), and ‘32 (#7).

As I mentioned in my Jeter piece a few weeks back, I think Gehrig is the most underrated of the Yankee greats, and this information only strengthens that opinion. He won 3 titles with Ruth and 3 titles with DiMaggio (not counting 39). He had 13 monster seasons in a row. Mix in the fact that he was born, raised, educated, played and died in New York City and I think it’s a shame that he is not accorded quite the status of Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle and Jeter.

As for me, the fact that I, as a card-carrying Yankee hater, can write a piece like this only moments after another title, just shows how mature I’ve become in my old age. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to re-watch the entire 2000 World Series on DVD, and try to figure out how my beloved Mets lost to the crappiest Yankee champ ever.

Update: The New York Times on Sunday wrote a similar piece as ESPN, ranking all 27 champions. And while they didn't agree on every point, there was definitely some cross-over, with the 1939 team ranked 2nd, and the other Gehrig/DiMaggio teams in the Top 9. Who knew?

Smiling Through Gritted Teeth

I’m a naturally disputatious sort. Put me in a room full of liberals and I’ll state the case for an invasion of Iran. Put me in a room full of conservatives and I’ll make a passionate defense of gay marriage. Sometimes, like an Olympic diver I’ll increase the degree of difficulty just for fun. I’ll make the liberal case for invading Iran (women’s rights, gay rights) and the conservative case for gay marriage (what could be more conservative than marriage?).

As you might imagine, I’m not always welcome at cocktail parties.

Several years back, I decided to take on a particularly contentious issue, one that was guaranteed to arouse ire in nearly all of my peers. I made a very conscious decision to become a relentlessly optimistic sports fan.

This is not an easy thing, you see, because I live in New York. In places like St. Louis and Boston, fans give their favorite team unconditional love. But in New York, that love is highly conditional. Only a few months before winning the Super Bowl, it appeared that every single Giants fan hated every single Giants player. And coach. With beloved owner Wellington Mara in the Eternal Luxury Box in the sky, it was even safe to hate management. Yankee fans were nightly booing Alex Rodriguez, whose two MVPs with the Yanks in four seasons are two more than Derek Jeter has won in fourteen seasons.

So I chose to regard the glass as half full. In nearly every conversation with a grumbling, sour-pussed, scowling New York fan, I was Mr. Brightside.

Meet the Mets

These days, though, the New York Mets, based in the section of Queens named after the active verb of toilets in action, are testing my optimism.

2006 ended in a heart-breaking playoff loss (seriously: Yadier Molina?). 2007 ended in one of the great September collapses in baseball history (up 7 with 17 to go, two numbers seared into every Mets fan’ cortex). And in 2008, with nearly every national publication and the very reliable Pecota computer picking them for 95 wins and a division title, they’re just, well, blah...

My faith in the Mets has been so sorely tested that last night, moments after the Mets completed a 3-of-4 series win against the first place Phils, I texted a friend this message: “Have you ever felt worse after winning 3 of 4?” (his reply: “Not with Billy Benitez “)

Let’s review the 4 game series:

Game 1: The Mets started Johan Santana, owner of multiple Cy Young awards. The Phillies started some guy named J.A. Happ, or J.B. Rapp, or R.A. Japp – I forget his name already. I think it was his second major league start, and in the first he was ripped pretty badly. The Mets lost.

Game 2: Mets win 9-4. Yay. But John Maine and Ryan Church both leave the game with injuries. (Update: Maine seems to be fine but Church has been Dled).

Game 3: Mets are up 2-0, with 2 out and 2 strikes in the bottom of the 9th. Billy Wagner gives up a game-tying homer. Mets win in 12, 4-2.

Game 4: Mets explode early and go up 10-1. But the Phils creep back to 10-7, and then then Billy Wags gives up 2 more runs in the 9th. Mets hang on to win 10-9, their fingernails worn to the nub.

Mr. Brightside
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still more optimistic than the average Mets fan.

Consider that this particular Mets team has the most prolific base stealer of his era (Jose Reyes has 266 career steals at age 25) and the most efficient base stealer of all time (Carlos Beltran has 264 lifetime steals in only 299 attempts). So do Mets fans rejoice at the bounty of base thiefs on their roster? No, they bitch and moan that Reyes is too aggressive and Beltran not aggressive enough.

So I’m going to keep focusing on the positive. They’re only 2 games over .500 but a game and a half out, the Phillies pitching is awful, and Johan Santana is about to reel off 5 straight Ws.

Let’s Go Mets!

Happy Opening Day

At least I think it's Opening Day. The Red Sox and A's played a week ago on the other side of the planet, and the Nationals and Braves kicked things off last night, so things are a little sketchier than when I was a kid. The modern definition of Opening Day is the day your team plays its first game. I'm a Mets fan, ergo today is Opening Day. So allow me to share a few things with you...

• If you haven't already, go to Fire Joe Morgan. The guys at FJM don't necessarily want Joe Morgan fired. But they have declared war - well, not war exactly; something funnier than war - on the sportscasters and sportswriters who believe that winning baseball is all about chemistry and grit, as opposed to things like getting on base and not making out. Here they are mocking Rob Dibble:

"There's too much movement now," former Reds reliever Rob Dibble says. "Chemistry is a big deal. You need to come up with the same guys, stay with them, get to know their tendencies and their inside jokes. Otherwise, it doesn't work."

Exactly. How am I supposed to field a ground ball when f*cking Gomez over there doesn't laugh when I say "Do I make you horny, baby?" It's from Austin Powers. Jesus, Gomez. Santana understood me. Santana laughed every time.Oh shit, the ball got past me. F*ck. Well, it's my turn to bat. I'm so depressed I guess I'll hit into a triple play. I hate Gomez. He told me he never even saw Meet the Parents. How am I supposed to do my "I have nipples, could you milk me?" routine?I just struck out.

If you're the kind of person who wants to pull your hair out when Rick Sutcliffe goes on and on about David Eckstein means so much to his team because his uniform gets dirty, check out FJM.

• The Rock Star, who played some college ball, once had a great line about Eckstein: if I was pitching, I'd throw at that guy in the on-deck circle.

• Mets-Marlins are on as I type this, and as if on cue Keith Hernandez just had an FJM moment. The Mets have scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 4th, have men on first and third with one out and Luis Castillo up. 3-1 count. And Hernandez says "I'd love to see Luis swing here." Now look, Keith Hernandez knows more about baseball than I'll ever know, but isn't it F*#+ING OBVIOUS that Luis should do anything but swing? The pitcher is struggling, David Wright is on deck, and Luis isn't exactly an RBI machine. Thankfully, Luis takes ball 4 in the dirt to load the bases for David Wright, who hits a 3-run double into the gap.

• The thing about Keith is, he says stuff like this all the time. Gary Cohen, the Mets play-by-play guy, who has never played ball on any level, is always artfully correcting Keith on game strategy. The odd thing is that Keith, like Joe Morgan, was an incredibly intelligent on-field guy. It's a mystery...

• I just did a google image search on Gary Cohen, trying to find a picture of him that showed how obviously non-athletic he is, and instead found a blog called The Mets are Better Than Sex. It's worth a peek.

• The Mets' opening day left fielder is named Angel Pagan. The moral implications are staggering. And it got me thinking, Hispanic culture has more overtly religious first names than Anglo-American culture. I mean, you don't see a lot of guys Anglo-American guys named Jesus, as you do in Hispanic culture. What about other European cultures? Are there Dutch guys named Jesus? French?
  


• Maybe I'm a little OCD, but it drives me crazy that the AL West has 4 teams, the NL Central has 6, and the other four divisions have 5 teams. Isn't that unfair? Everything else being equal, an AL West team has a 25% chance of winning the division, whereas an NL Central team has a - um, hold on, let me get my calculator - shoot, I dunno, a 17% chance. Something like that. And it's not like this is a hard problem to fix. You simply take the Brewers, who used to be in the AL anyway, and move 'em to the AL West. Voila! Six teams with 5 divisions each! Why don't they do that? Oh wait, I remember...

• Had my Fantasy Draft last night. We've been doing the Madisox League since 1992, and of the 230 guys drafted last night, only 4 of them were drafted in the inaugural draft in '92, and all of them were pitchers. Mussina, Glavine, Smoltz, and Johnson. I won't be surprised if somebody picks up Maddux at some point.

• Also, we drafted 3 Ians last night (Kinsler, Kennedy, and Snell). Seems like a lot of Ians...
  

• Mets are up 6-2 but the Marlins are threatening. Gotta go. Happy Opening Day!